... Well okay not ACTUALLY you guys personally but with all the help, support and advice you guys gave and what I have learnt.
Turning the clocks back a year or two, I knew next to nothing about DOS and old Windows. I had no idea what any of the commands were, not even "CD" commands (I know i'm terrible, I grew up with an Amiga, sorry!). But over time, I learnt alot and have in no small way, fallen in love with these old x86 machines and as such, they have earnt a place in my computer horde, hell I even got myself a PII machine too thanks to the knowlage I gained here.

My interest started when I got the MegaPC, most of my interest for the Megadrive games library but it was then that I started to explore the PC side of it. It was all pretty much set up perfectly upon arrival but the 40Mb hard drive simply didn't cut it. After doing some research here and other places, I learnt I needed to get an IDE drive less than 504MB and managed to source a 4-hundred and something drive on another forum, when that arrived I added some extra RAM maxing the machine to it's full 16MB (oh and a 387 Co-Pro to top it off). So the relentless learning curve began, software wise especially. First thing that struck me was just how different it was to install DOS and Windows 3.1 to modern day formatting/installing, it's amazing how far we have come. The drive that arrived (from the NL IIRC) was to be pre-installed with all this stuff because I was a lazy git I guess but alas I didn't get away with it as the guy put a Dutch version on there with Dutch language and key maps so that was no good for me. Serves me right I guess!
Several PM's later we finally got a working fully English/British DOS and Windows setup, a valuable bit of knowlage that was the start of something big. A few PM's more and the parallel CD drive was running too, as was the mouse with basic understanding of the Autoexec. Although this support was elsewhere, the thanks needs to go to Vogons for the fine-tuning and learning how Config.SYS and Autoexec.BAT works helped me a great deal. After learning this too, finally the 386 is about perfect and thankfully so because as sod's law struck, the damn Megadrive part isn't working as it should now. 😒

Still, this brings me onto the meat of the subject, the 486 DX4 machine. This was really a deep-end for me, I had no idea that even in the mid-90s, there was nothing but an AT keyboard input for standard PC's. I also never knew the existance of VESA cards and thus learnt alot more when asking here about it. I stared by removing the broken CD drive and adding a 20GB HD, making the machine alot more useable. It was the support off-site that I learnt how to get the CD drive running but it was the help here that got my Hard Drive working as it should to it's full capacity with that utterly wonderful HD Utility program (which I forget the name of but il dig out the floppy soon!). I then got an AWE32 which was a whole chapter in the learning curve of x86. The whole plan was to get a card that could handle just about everything, including an MT-32 which I got shortly after. Learning how to install and configure the card was a real turning point for me. I could now understand how it ran and how to get my head around the various ports like IRQ and the such like to be able to set up my games correctly.

Later I added a shiney ATi Mach64 VLB card and with help here from users and the driver library, configured it so that it is used to it's full potential (upto 1024x768 @ 16bit colour depth).

My focus then moved onto the MT-32. My MIDI cables arrived from China and so my mission was to get the AWE talking to it. However it wasn't going to be that simple ofcourse. At first I thought I wasted £50 on getting hold of it, but since I bought it, a very bright user by the name of "bjt" came up with what could arguably be the best audio based software ever (for DOS stuff anyway) "SoftMPU". This meant that any games that relied on an expensive to get hold of MPU card could now be emulated in software and with next to no processing power needed to run it! Free too, amazing guy!
I began to plug it all in and step by step, make sure it is all plugged in correctly and after some more learning, finally got "SoftMPU" displayed on the LCD screen of the MT-32 and it singing the Monkey Island tune (well ok, apparently you dont need SoftMPU for it but the games that do should work).

Alas it was complete. One of the most versitile DOS machines one could possibly wish for and all thanks to the kind users of Vogons. It was because of the knowlage here, I was able to build myself a late 90's - early 00's PII machine and set that up without the support here.

So in no particular order, here's to all who make it possible in no small part:

- Yushatak
- Keropi
- MaxWar
- Mau1wurf1977
- jmrydholm
- bjt
- Shodan486
- elianda
- Old Thrashbarg
- Hatta

+ Any others I may have forgotton to mention.

So thanks again for the massive support, I will upload some shorts of the machines in action very soon as a kinda reward, of sorts.